Dr. Lowell had seen something of the great world abroad, and he stood in an amiable relation to that self-centred, comfortable world of New England which held to the established order, even though there had begun within it already the agitation which was to shake the nation. Like many thus poised, he hated slavery in the abstract, but shrank back when it became a question of meddling with it: the instinct for the preservation of an established order was strong. The “abolitionism” which he saw rising was to him “harsh, dogmatic, uncharitable, unchristian,” and it disturbed his gentle, orderly nature. From the sheltered nook of Elmwood, he looked out on a restless, questioning world, but his own part seemed to be marked out for him. He had his parish, with a thousand petty disorders to rectify; he had his books, which he loved and read; he drove to town in his chaise to attend the meetings of the Historical Society, of which he was long secretary, and he watched the chickens and growing things in his green domain of Elmwood. The tall pines which murmur about the old house were planted by him. He brought to the solution of the new problems which were vexing men the calm religious philosophy which had solved any doubts he may have had, and if his equanimity was disturbed he righted himself always with a cheerful optimistic piety. One of his parish who had grown to womanhood under his eye, and had married, made up her mind to take a stand in some reform as a public speaker, and from his chamber at Elmwood—for this was late in his life, when he was in retirement—he sent for her to come to him.
“I shall never forget his greeting,” she wrote long after. As I opened the chamber door he rose from the old easy-chair, and standing erect, cried out: ‘Child! my child! what is this I hear? Why are you talking to the whole world?’ He was clothed in a long white flannel dressing-gown, with a short shoulder cape hardly reaching to his belt. His was no longer the piercing expression, aggressive to a degree, that Harding has portrayed. The curling locks that gave individuality to his forehead had been cut away, the gentle influence of a submissive spirit had impressed itself upon his features. In a moment I was seated at his feet, and then came a long and intimate talk of why and when and wherefore, which ended in a short prayer with his hand upon my head, and the words, ‘Now promise me that you will never enter the desk without first seeking God’s blessing!’ I answered only by a look.”[3]
Rev. Charles Lowell
This Dr. Primrose, as his son once affectionately called him, had for a companion one who was the farthest possibly removed from the fussy, ambitious wife of the Vicar of Wakefield. When he once made a journey to Europe with Mrs. Lowell and their eldest daughter, the little party took especial delight in a trip to the Orkney Islands, and in the enjoyment of friendly intercourse with the Traills from that region; for it was but a step that Mrs. Lowell needed to take to bring her into close kinship with the Orkney folk. Her grandfather, Robert Traill, whose name, together with her own name of Spence, she gave to one of her boys, had come from Orkney to America, had married there, and left a daughter, Mrs. Lowell’s mother,[4] when he went back to Great Britain at the revolt of the colonies. Thus, when Robert Traill’s granddaughter visited Orkney, she was returning to her own kin. Not only so, but her father, Keith Spence, came of Highland ancestry, and it was easy to find a forbear in the Sir Patrick Spens of the old ballad, as it was also to claim kinship with Minna Troil, whom the Wizard of the North had lifted out of the shadowy forms of life into the enduring reality of “The Pirate.”
This close affiliation with the North disclosed itself in Mrs. Lowell in a rare beauty of person and temperament, together with a suggestion of that occult power which haunts the people of the Orkney Isles. Whether or no Mrs. Lowell had, as was sometimes said, the faculty of second sight, she certainly had that love of ballads and delight in singing and reciting them which imparts a wild flower fragrance to the mind;[5] and her romantic nature may easily be reckoned as the brooding place of fancies which lived again in the poetic genius of her son. She had been bred in the Episcopal Church, and that may possibly have had its influence in the determination of her son Robert’s vocation, but in marrying Dr. Lowell she must have found much common ground with one who always resolutely refused to be identified with a sect almost local in its bounds. “I have adopted,” he wrote in 1855, “no other religious creed than the Bible, and no other name than Christian as denoting my religious faith.” The few letters from Mrs. Lowell’s pen which remain contain messages of endearment that flutter about the head of her “Babie Jammie,” as she called him, and betray a tremulous nature, anxious with pride and fond perplexity.
The companionship of the elder Lowells began in a happy manner in their childhood. The grandfather of Charles Lowell was the Rev. John Lowell, of Newburyport, who was twice married. His widow continued to make her home in Newburyport after her husband’s death, but when her husband’s son, John Lowell, the lawyer and jurist, left the place and established himself in Boston, she also left the town and went to live in Portsmouth near her niece, Mrs. Brackett. Mrs. Lowell had been John Lowell’s mother since his boyhood, and after the manner so common in New England households the titular grandmother ruled serenely without being subjected to nice distinctions. Charles Lowell, thus, when a boy, was a frequent visitor at his grandmother’s Portsmouth home, and his playmate was his grandmother’s great-niece, Harriet Brackett Spence. The intimacy deepened and before Charles Lowell sailed for Europe a betrothal had taken place.
There were three sons and two daughters when James Russell,[6] the youngest in this family, was born. Charles was between eleven and twelve, Rebecca ten, Mary a little over eight, William between five and six, and Robert[7] between two and three. All these lived to maturity, excepting William, who died when James was four years old. Charles by his seniority was the mentor and guide of his younger brother during his adolescence, especially when their father was absent, as he was once for a journey in Europe, but Mary[8] was the sister to whom he was especially committed in his childhood. She was his little nurse, and as her own love of poetry came early, she was wont to read him to sleep, when he took his daily nap, from Spenser,[9] and she used to relate in after years how hard the little boy found it to go to sleep under the charm of the stories, yet how firmly nature closed his eyes at last.